


and now, abide

by echoist



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-05-13
Updated: 2010-05-13
Packaged: 2017-10-09 10:27:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,059
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/86278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/echoist/pseuds/echoist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What remains, in the wake of an apocalypse averted.  A what if, in before the Season 5 finale airs.  (No spoilers for 5.22 as I have no idea what's going to happen, I'm just hypothesizing and going crazy waiting.)  Apparently I need to add that this is not a religious statement.  I'm...not actually religious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	and now, abide

                Dean clawed his way up through the rubble, inch by inch, cracked and broken concrete tearing through layers of calluses across his palms.  _Breaking_, he corrected as the block beneath his right hand crumbled to dust and sent him tumbling back down, hand scrabbling against the dirt for something, anything to hold on to.  A strip of fabric fluttered in the edge of his vision and suddenly he was caught, a hand beneath his arm, muscles and skin pulled tight and threatening to snap.  Jagged debris scraped his skin raw as he struggled, tugged up over the lip of the pit and onto solid ground before staggering to his feet.

                Or at least, he made the attempt.  The angel’s arms wrapped tight around his chest, pulling him roughly off a patch of seared and blackened grass.  “Dean,” the gruff voice whispered, breath cold and moist against his ear but sounding like an echo from a mile away.   The world shifted, sloping suddenly in his field of vision and his knees threatened to give way.  _Shell shock_, he thought.  That’s what they call this.  What happens when you’re too close to a bomb going off and your brain gets rattled and –

                “Dean,” the voice repeated, more insistent now, accompanied by a brisk shaking of hands clasped hard about his arms.  He rocked back and forth, muscles limp like some kind of fucking doll, and turned his head away from the smoking crater that had once been a convent.   “I heard you the first time, Cas,” he answered, realizing that his name from the angel’s mouth was less sound and more intent, somehow bypassing  the tide of blood and ashes in his ears.  Orange lightning split the sky overhead, the flash brilliant and painful but he couldn’t hear the answering crack that must have echoed loud into the distance.  “Sam,” he whispered, his brother’s name falling from his lips like a stone.  “Sammy,” the weight of it nearly unbearable as the sky fell away, darkness rewritten upon the face of the deep.




*

                Fingers carded loosely through his hair, strokes uneven and almost rhythmic in their persistence.  The wind made a horrible sound, scraping and shuddering across the ground like a scouring plague.  Maybe it was, Dean considered, thoughts rising up, fog-like, to drift slowly towards consciousness.  Hands ghosting across his scalp, abstract comfort and his eyes all too suddenly open wide.  _There’s nothing left_, he remembered, the shock no less painful the second time it set in.  Sam was gone, his brother, the one thing in all the world he was supposed to protect at all costs.  _Gone_.  Locked away in a prison he didn’t deserve.

                “It wasn’t supposed to happen that way,” he insisted, shaking his head in an attempt to clear his vision.  Everything had gone dull around the edges, blurred, but the wind stung sharp across his skin as a reminder.  “None of this was supposed to happen, Dean,” a soft voice from behind him, now, soft as the hands cradling his head and stroking his hair.  “It happened, and that is all.”

                _Four rings sliding from his outstretched hand, growing and twisting until they surrounded him, his brother, Lucifer, the Devil, all horribly one and the same.  Spinning and changing, Sam still there in the eyes but the rest just a  vessel screaming, laughing  – _

_                And then nothing.  It was over.  They had won._

                A broken altar, a broken church.  A broken space in the world, filled with dust and shadows and the emptiness of promises.  “I should’ve stopped him,” the only words Dean had left.  The angel moved, arms around him like a child, and the only words that made any sense at all sounded close inside his ears, “It was never your choice to make.”

*

                He slept; he didn’t know how long.  The sun had ceded dominance to the rising cloud of ash and sulfur, the clinging stuff of nightmares still hung low in the sky.  The Impala was lost, blown to a fine gray mist like everything else within a mile of the blast – everything but him, anyway, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to think about that when Castiel was running so low on Grace.  They wouldn’t  be going anywhere until both of them could walk.  The angel’s hands never left his skin, cool and comforting where the night had scraped him raw.  Some small part of Dean’s mind checked in long enough to pose the question before sinking back down in defeat; no one else _but_ Cas had a right to be here now.  Not anymore.

                “I am with you,” just a whisper on the wind, and the world gone strangely silent.

*

                 “Looking for this?”  A familiar voice seeped out from the shadows and Dean staggered in surprise.   His arm slung around the angel’s shoulders kept him from tumbling to the ground, and for a moment he was grateful for his crumpled defenses.  This shit never would have flown if Dean Winchester had been anything approaching himself, but as it stood, he would take all the help he could get.  It still wasn’t all that much. 

                 “Man,” the voice continued, nasal and cheerfully condescending as only an archangel could manage.  “The things you people throw away.  Whatever happened to reduce, reuse, recycle, eh?”  Gabriel chuckled, and Dean didn’t know whether to hug him or throw a punch.  “This baby’s got another few millennia left on it before it belongs in the trash!”

                 Dean shifted his gaze to the object dangling from the archangel’s fist; covered his eyes as light began to seep through cracks in the rusted surface.  “Dude, you take stalking to a whole new level,” he managed hoarsely, coughing the dust of the last two days out of his throat.  _I’m glad you’re alive_, he wanted to say, _I’m glad someone’s still alive, _but all that came out was, “The hell am I supposed to do with that?”

                 “Nothing!” Gabriel answered.  “It’s not yours anymore, you big lug.  You gave it up,” he explained, then, lower, as though confiding a secret, “That was the whole point.”  Dean rubbed the sand from his eyes, frowning at the archangel.  “It’s his now,” Gabriel continued, gesturing at Castiel.  The angel blinked, shifting his weight and Dean with it. 

                 “I don’t understand,” the angel stated, breathing labored and uncomfortably human.  “Mortals ended this conflict; God did not intervene.  He does not wish to be found.”

                 “Doesn’t he?  Maybe you’ve just been looking in the wrong places,” Gabriel suggested, humming a catchy tune under his breath.  “Maybe – oh, and here’s a surprise – _maybe_ – he’s never really been gone.”

                 “You’re not real, are you?” Dean asked, nudging the angel forward a step.  “We’ve been out here too long, no food, no clean water.  We’re hallucinating.  That’s why you’re not making any damn sense.”    




                 “That’s faith for you,” Gabriel shrugged.  “Dead or not, celebrities like me never really disappear.”  He winked, as though enjoying a private joke.  “You chuckleheads can think whatever you want.  For my part, I wouldn’t put it past the pair of you to share a hallucination.”  Dean squinted, wondering if he’d just been insulted.  “It all comes down to the same thing, in the end.”

                 “Which is what, brother?” Castiel asked, a shiver of static creeping into his usual monotone.

                 “You need this.”  Gabriel stepped forward and settled the amulet around the angel’s neck, its blue-white glow lighting the hollows of his face.  Castiel’s eyes were sunken and dimmed, his cheekbones sharp; a day’s growth of stubble dotted his chin.  Resting against the angel’s chest, the necklace hummed like a tiny, fragile bird in flight.  It flashed, once, brighter than the sun, and Dean startled at the sound of rushing wings.

                 “How?” Castiel breathed, feeling the Grace wrap itself around him, reaching out to cover the man at his side like a blanket.  “You never lost your Grace,” Gabriel explained.  “You just forgot where you left it.” 

                 “And…how is that any different?” Dean asked, tired and confused and every bone in his body begging to lay his burdens down at someone else’s feet.  “It’s a lot different,” the archangel responded.  “Grace is who and what we are, everything our Father ever gave us.  You humans give it so many names,” he said, looking pointedly at Dean as if he were any example.  “You try to box it in, bend it to follow your silly little rules, but in the end it all comes down to the same thing.  Every time.”

                 “Faith,” Castiel whispered, his head bowed nearly to his chest, certain of his unforgiveable failure.  “That’s what he means, Dean.  I – lost my faith.” 

                 “That’s part of it, sure,” Gabriel answered.  “But think about it, scruffy; the most important thing is that you ever had it to lose in the first place.”  Castiel ran a finger down the cord, brushing the warm surface of the metal trinket.  “Where do you think that came from, eh?  Not by watching this loser and his buddies make a mess of everything from on high, was it?”

                 “Hey,” Dean interjected.  “I’m right here, you know.”

                 “It was only by chance that I found you in Hell, Dean,“ Castiel began, shuffling his feet through a cloud of dust.  “Though, I admit, I had hoped –“

                 “You see?” Gabriel interrupted.  “Not by chance, bucko, not in a million years.  Hope led you into the stinking heart of evil and your faith led you back out again, but fess up, son – it wasn’t the same faith you left Heaven with, now was it?” 




                 Castiel watched the horizon swallow what was left of the light.  “No,” he answered, eyelids sliding shut against the dark.  _There was no darkness in Hell, nor any light, but by the uncertain gleam of a thousand cold flames he had stitched one man’s soul back together from its ruin.  Had hunted, high and low, for any piece that might be missing; had lived, in those eternal moments, for one thing only, and had killed for the same.  He stepped forth from the Pit believing in only one gospel, one perfect truth, and it was this.  It was present with him now, as it had been all along. He had placed his seal upon it, stood by it, fought for it, and died for it.  He would retrace every step, if only he were asked.   _

                 “Here’s the thing, kids,” Gabriel continued, stepping forward to ruffle Castiel’s hair.  “It’s the simplest thing, and no one down here ever seems to catch on – there’s no Grace, not for any of us, without that crazy little thing called love.”  He glanced at Dean, then let his gaze drift back towards the still-smoking ruin where Lucifer had met his match.  “Your brother understood that, I think.”  Gabriel turned away and Castiel’s head snapped up,  as though the last puzzle piece had fallen into place. 

                 The amulet buzzed and hummed, singing out its light into the gathering dusk.  Dean’s fingers brushed its familiar lines, could almost feel the reassuring weight over his chest.  The light seemed to call out to something in him, respond, even, as though formed from the same stuff, and he wasn’t even remotely ready to consider the consequences of that tonight.

                 “I can’t just leave him down there like that,” Dean declared, voice whiskey-low and gravel sharp.   “I won’t.  It’s not right. How the hell are we supposed to _fix _this shit?”      




                 “Can’t tell you that, kiddo,” Gabriel said, arms crossed over his chest.  “But if you figure it out, I want in.”  Dean inclined his head, acknowledging the support as a foregone conclusion.  “Just – Cas, buddy – promise me you won’t waste any more time looking for something you’ve already found.”  Gabriel winked and was gone, leaving a hole in the fabric of the night.

                 Castiel turned, slowly, regarding the hunter still slung across his shoulders.  He could see, now, the Grace written into every line of Dean’s frame; could see the glow that gathered in the air like fireflies.  He reached out, hesitant; ran his fingers slowly up Dean’s arm until they rested over flesh already marked, already sealed. 

                 Dean shuddered, a tumbler falling into place as the angel at last gave words to a vow he had sworn in a lightless, soundless place, so long ago.  “I promise,” he said, and the darkness fled before the light.


End file.
